Expressbook was born to make it easier for people to work together to insure that students
have the best possible outcomes. The first thing that's necessary is that everyone
know the definition of success. Expressbook has many features allowing district
curriculum specialists to easily define the standards against which success will be measured.

Standards

Expressbook is designed with the realization that most subjects are taught every year, to each
grade level, with activities and performance measures that change as the student achieves mastery.
Expressbook treats each subject as one thing that is expressed differently for each
grade level.

Instead of entering 'math' six times for six grade levels, in Expressbook it is entered once
as a category. Subtopics are entered within the category and measurable activities within
those. Every level of the standard is assigned one or more grade levels. Math might be applied
to all six grade levels. Number systems just the earliest grades. Geometry to the later ones.

With Expressbook, those are one topic, each with different activities that also might be applied to
multiple grades each with performance threshold banding that sets the teachers' expectations for
students at each grade level. This makes designing a curriculum a coherent project and insures that
teachers understand what it to be taught and what is expected from the students.

It also allows data to be collected in a comprehensive way that is more easily subject to analysis.

The Gradebook

At the end of the day, the point is to get an organized set of activities into the teacher's gradebook for
marking. Expressbook makes this easy.

Organized by Specialties

Each class has one or more specialties, eg, Homeroom, Music or Math Help. The teacher assigned to that class
has a gradebook for it. The standards and activities marked with corresponding specialties appears in
the gradebook if appropriate for that grade level and set to be taught during that term.

Activities can
appear in more than one specialty (usually, everything is part of the Homeroom specialty as well
as any others). A mark for an Activity for a specific student will appear in all gradebooks referencing
that Activity and student.